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Wednesday, 15 April 2015

I picked up an interesting book recently about improving what you do with your life on a day to day basis. I wasn't particularly unhappy with the way that I spent my time but reading this book did make me think that maybe I could spend it a little more wisely and with more purpose. More details of this further down the page but in the meantime..

In February, during my blog hiatus, I had another birthday, like you do, and for this particular one I asked for and got, a 6x6 gelli plate. Last week I finally gave myself time to play with it.

Wow! What a colour!

I just tried out various texture tools and mark makers and for the one above, I cut a zig zag pattern on the edge of an old credit card and used it to make the pattern used as a background in this journal type page:

It has been put on my notice board as a reminder to lose the odd few pounds that I've gained whilst 'hibernating' during the Winter months. I added the circle shapes using various lids and the silhouette is a stencil cut out from an old fashion book. The ruler Washi tape was added as a hint to losing the inches!

I did have fun using the gelli plate and will definately be returning to it again soon. This was another one of many textured backgrounds that I made on the same day:

Back to the book that I spoke of earlier and it has the quite cheesy name of 'How to do Everything and be Happy' and it was written a few years ago (but still available) by Peter Jones.

One of the ideas he mentions in the book is to have a NOW List, not a Bucket List as it is a list of things you could do now, if you have the money, time etc. This idea appealed to me and I even made myself a journal page about it:

This is what its about really, not that I'm planning on going anywhere soon (hopefully!)...

One of my 'Now' List categories is Art and I have a subcategory list that contains lots of art techniques that I would like to do. I have all the equipment (I am an avid art materials collector!) but have just never got round to doing them. This is my chance! And whilst I'm at it, I can show you them as I do them (will also get me back into regular blogging again), ....starting off with Lino Printing, which I did earlier today...

Yes, I was very pleased to get through this particular craft with all my fingers intact! Especially as I haven't done it in about 30 years ahem, a very long time! I even used that extra tough stuff,reallino! It came in an old Reeves Kit that I got from a church sale for about 50p a while ago....

The item that really saved my fingers though was this:

Made by my clever husband a while ago when I said I needed it, otherwise I couldn't do lino printing (and still didn't do it then either!).... It's actually made from a wooden toy (spot the giveaway!) purchased from a charity shop. Basically, as I think you can see, it's a wooden board with two blocks screwed on to it top and bottom. The bottom block anchors it to the edge of your work bench and what is does is it prevents your lino from moving around too much whilst you are trying to carve it.

It was invaluable to me today as it stopped me burning my fingers! 'How so?' I hear you ask... Well, because I used lino which was as tough as nails to carve, I had to keep warming it up under the grill to soften it and sometimes it got rather hot! Putting it down on this meant no toasted fingers for me so it was very useful!

For my design, I thought I'd use an alphabet & number stencil. All I had to do was trace through the back to get my reverse image:

..which went almost to plan.

I followed some of the instructions in Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's book, but wished I had got 'Speedycarve' to carve out of, rather than the very tough lino. I was aware that she said that you 'glide' not 'gouge' whilst I was gouging!...

First job was to carve a 'moat' around the edge of your design:

...before removing all the other surplus. For some reason my other pictures of the process turned out to be out of focus so I'll cut to the chase and show you my finished prints:

As I was printing them and seeing parts of it not printing I thought to myself, it's got character!.... and it has, really...but I simply must get myself some Speedycarve....

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On Creative Flourishes you will find examples of my photography, mixed media artwork, cardmaking and general art & craft making. Hopefully I will inspire others (as others inspire me) to get creating too! I also include snippets of my family life with my husband and my two teen boys, aged 17 and 15.